Google Asks Court to Gut “Kitchen Sink” Lawsuit Claiming it Profits From Piracy
In a lawsuit filed at a New York federal court in June, leading textbook publishers including Cengage Learning, Macmillan Learning, Elsevier and McGraw Hill, accused Google of profiting from sales of infringing copies of their textbooks. According to the complaint, Google’s “systemic and pervasive advertising” drives potential buyers to the websites of ‘Pirate Sellers’ who utilize Google Shopping Ads to advertise infringing copies of...
Pirate Sites, Billions of Visits, Wiped Out in Hours: Sifting the Fmovies Wreckage
With an estimated 190 million visits in March 2024 alone, few pirate streaming sites have ever come to close to the popularity of Fmovies. How it was even possible for an unlicensed platform to attract so much traffic is closely linked to Fmovies’ uncanny ability to stay almost perpetually online, year after year. Potential answers to these questions lie in a rich pool of circumstantial evidence; one that promises much but always...
Pirate Streaming Giants Fboxz, AniWave, Zoroxtv & Others Dead in Major Collapse
Pirate streaming sites are a major problem for Hollywood and according to rightsholders, several of the largest sites are operated from Vietnam. Vietnam has been a focal point for more than half a decade. It was also the home country for the 123Movies streaming empire before it was shut down in 2018. Initially, little was known about the reasons behind 123Movies’ demise but after a few months, the MPA and ACE confirmed that the...
Piracy Shield 2.0 in Doubt For 2024 , TV Manufacturers Urged to Ban VPN
Early June 2024, Italian media reported on comments made by the head of telecoms regulator AGCOM at the Serie A Festival a few days earlier. During the panel “The metaverse of piracy” Massimiliano Capitanio reportedly brought those in attendance up to date on Piracy Shield, Italy’s controversial and by then already failing anti-piracy blocking system. Piracy Shield has had its fair share of problems but on a fundamental level, it...
Pssst… Want to Snitch on Sellers of Pirate Streaming Services?
Those who follow mainstream tabloid media in the UK and Ireland should be familiar with online streaming piracy by now; whether they like it or not. The harms and threats of illicit streaming devices or using the preferred term in Ireland, dodgy boxes, have been discussed at length in hundreds of news articles. Additional reports on prison sentences for resellers of these services, make clear that these are serious offenses....
‘Bonus’ Episode of ‘House of the Dragon’ Comes With a Nasty Surprise for Pirates
“Game of Thrones” and its prequel “House of the Dragon” have proven very popular in pirate circles. The fact that episodes repeatedly leaked before their official premieres made them even more appealing. This summer, HBO released the second season of House of the Dragon, and the series is already confirmed for a third. To the disappointment of some, however, there were no leaks this year. Or were there? After the eighth and final...
